Social media can make us believe that everyone has it all figured out, except you. You are the lone exception to the rule, and you are the only one who is experiencing unexpected disasters. That is the furthest thing from the truth! Which is why I want to highlight this week’s guest, who bounced back from an unexpected business disaster and was all the better for it. 

After sailing across the Caribbean for 4 years, Andrea moved back to Miami, sold her e-commerce business, and bought a landscaping company with an SBA loan. Five days after closing, the previous owner stole $7,000 and disappeared. The manager quit and told all 12 employees to leave. Revenue dropped from $70K to $40K a month. With a toddler, a newborn, and a half-million dollars in debt, quitting was not an option. She and her husband rebuilt the business, working 80-hour weeks. When the workload became unsustainable, she taught herself AI from YouTube. Within weeks, AI was answering calls, booking appointments, collecting overdue payments, and sending post-service photos. Her husband went from getting home at 6 pm to 3 pm. Fridays became family days. They turned down a $750K buyout offer. Now she runs Crewless, helping service business owners implement the same AI systems so their kids get the best of them, not what’s left.

In this week’s episode, we’re talking about how she lost everything 5 days after closing and built it all back with AI! Life and business are not about never dealing with adversity. It’s about pushing through, discovering what you’re capable of, and learning new skills to make your business even better! 

Tune in to hear what went wrong in Andrea’s new business venture and how she dug her way out of it with AI! 

Resources Mentioned:
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Website: andreapalacio.ai 

YouTube: @ai.andreapalacio 

LinkedIn: Andrea Palacio

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Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST, an Afro-Latina-owned boutique podcast production and copywriting studio. 

Episode Transcript:

Erika: What would you do if five days after signing for a business,The previous owner stole $7,500 and disappeared? That is exactly what happened to today’s guest. Andrea Palacio had already done the hard stuff. She’d left corporate, built a thriving e-commerce business, sailed across the freaking Caribbean with her husband for four years, just the two of them and their dogs, [00:01:00] and she was living the dream.

Then they bought a landscaping company, and five days after closing, the previous owner was gone. The money was gone, the manager quit, and on the way out told all 12 employees not to bother staying either because revenue had dropped significantly,and the manager said they were not going to make it Andrea had a toddler, a newborn, an SBA loan, and her family home on the line as collateral. Quitting was not an option.So she and her husband did what you would do whenever your back is against the wall. They showed up, worked 80-hour weeks. Her husband was doing all the manual labor in the Florida heat, and Andrea was home with the babies, answering every call, holding it all together. And when the workload became unsustainable, she did something that changed everything.

She taught herself AI. Today, we are having a conversation with Andrea about how she’s implemented AI in her landscaping business, how it became a thriving business. We [00:02:00] also talk about the power of a personal brand and how she leverages AI to help her grow her social channels. She also shares what she thinks every business owner needs to do to start implementing AI.

I can’t wait for you to hear this conversation. Let’s get into it Andrea, welcome to Chingona Revolution Podcast. How are you?

Andrea: Thank you, Erika. I’m doing great. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here

Erika: I’m excited for this conversation. I have so many questions for you, but for the people who may not know who you are yet, can you just give us a brief intro and overview of who Andrea is?

Andrea: of course. Well, I am a freedom lover. I left my corporate job in 2016, started an e-commerce business with my husband. Uh, we were able to travel for ti- full-time for about seven years. Then, um, during that period of time, we sailed across the Caribbean for four years, just the two of us and our two dogs.

Uh, we– I got pregnant, moved back to Miami. We sold our e-commerce business and [00:03:00] decided to acquire a landscaping company. Um, and that company nearly broke us, and that’s when we decided to sell the business. And as we decided to sell, I said, “You know what? While this sells, I need to figure something out because it is so overwhelming.

 I cannot deal with all the calls.” we went from seventy thousand dollars in revenue down to forty thousand dollars in revenue. We went from twelve employees down to two employees after spending all of our life savings and everything. And I got in debt with the SBA to acquire this company, right?

And so I end up getting into artificial intelligence and automations to try to solve my own business problems. And I automate the business to the point where we finally get an offer to buy our company, and we said, “Thank you, but we don’t want it anymore,” because now our business is automated and operating on its own to the point where we are pretty happy with the business now, so we don’t need to sell anymore.

And that’s what got me into the world of AI. Now, I bought a little bit over, what is it? Maybe nine months ago. I told my husband, we still own the company, [00:04:00] but I told my husband I didn’t wanna run the business with him anymore, that I was going to follow what I actually love doing, which is AI and automations and helping other businesses that are going through the same thing that we went through at some point.

And so I started in consulting, helping business owners really, solve their business problems by having AI employees working for them and putting together clear systems that would allow them to maximize their resources. And, then I started a coaching program, and that’s where I’m at.

Erika: Amazing. Yeah, I cannot imagine you at a corporate job after everything you described you did, between traveling full-time for seven years, sailing across the Caribbean, and then buying a business. So, you know, what I, what stands out to me from your story is that so many people wanna go through life without challenges, but very common, very commonly, we end up getting so much insight through those challenges.

If you weren’t, if you hadn’t [00:05:00] acquired this business that started to decline in revenue and you even made the decision, like, “I’m gonna let this go,” and I feel like that also relieved the pressure of trying to make it work, and in that you almost opened the door of opportunity to pivot to your next business.

So I think that that’s so interesting, and we spend so much time avoiding struggles, but on the other side of these challenges, especially in business, can be amazing breakthroughs. So, I know you had mentioned before our call that you had bought this, like, boring business of, of landscaping because you had watched a lot of YouTube videos, so, about acquisition.

So tell, tell us a little bit about what that journey was like. How did you go… ‘Cause I don’t think you were born thinking, “I wanna buy a landscaping company.” Something happened along the way that made you really interested in it.

Andrea: Definitely. Yeah, and I love how you just said that because you couldn’t have said it any better. I learned that getting outside of my comfort zone is what makes me grow. And so when, even when we were living on the [00:06:00] sailboat, I would force myself. I was at first, like anybody, I, I wouldn’t wanna … It’s not that I wouldn’t want to, but I would just force myself to get in the water with sharks and dive with sharks and just because I felt like facing that fear would force me to just level up in some way, right?

 so the reason why we decided to acquire a landscaping company is because we were stuck with the e-commerce business. We felt like professionally we just weren’t growing anymore. And while living on, on the sailboat, you know, we found a lot of strengths and weaknesses inside both, you know, myself and my husband, right?

I was always the girl behind the computer, and my husband was like, “You know, I’m very manual.” He w- he became a plumber, an electrician. He was able to solve every single problem inside the boat. And I was like, “Yeah, I’m not touching that. I’m not interested.” Right? And so when we sold the company, we wanted some- a business that would have kind of the best of both worlds, right?

So I told him, I’m like, “Well, at the end of the day, I can always do marketing, admin, customer service. I’m gonna be behind a computer. Just don’t expect [00:07:00] me to do anything related to the landscaping company,” right? But for him it was the equipment, the people, just being very hands-on, and for him it was like what would require his strengths, right?

We didn’t think of a landscaping company initially. We thought of like a boat business or something like that. But as we were watching, we started going into YouTube and watching all these videos from, uh, M&A experts like Cody Sanchez and Roland Frasier, and we took their courses, and we took … We kind of like did all of that, and they’re like, “Yeah, buy a boring business, a landscaping company.”

We’re like, “A landscaping company? How hard can it be to just push a mower, right? Like, it can’t be that hard.” Oh my God, were we wrong. We just went against this massive wall and, and that’s really why we bought the business because we thought, “Okay, we, uh, we acquire the landscaping company, buy a two or three or four more businesses, and then we just exit and we are rich.”

Definitely not like that. So that’s what happened.[00:08:00] 

Erika: Oh, so interesting. And I bet, I mean, just being on a sailboat for that long, I can imagine that you learn so much about yourself, so much about each other, because there’s not the constant simulation of the outside world. It’s like you and the ocean and almost… I, I wonder how that experience also trusted you to really listen to your intuition and understand your strengths and weaknesses, like you mentioned with, you know, your, your husband, how he learned how to do all these different things.

Andrea: So how do you think that that influenced the next phase of your life? Just massively. I c- I would not be here had it not been for that experience because the reason, the whole reason why I decided to just get into AI was because I had … You know, when you spend seven years traveling full time on a sailboat, you … We were kiteboarding when we felt like it, scuba diving when we felt like it, traveling when we felt like it.

Doing absolutely everything we wanted with our time, and we had a business that was allowing [00:09:00] us to pay for that, right? And suddenly when we just say, “Okay, let’s get in debt for this business. Let’s go back to living in a house. Let’s have babies at the same time,” right? Because at the same time we’re having a, a newborn and, uh, uh, now I was pregnant with my, with my second one, and my oldest was six months.

And so doing that, you completely lose all the freedom that you have, right? So you go from having all the freedom in the world to now working 80 hours a week because you have to, because your business is failing, right? If you don’t do anything, you’re going to … You have to… When you get an SBA loan, you have to give your house or your personal assets as collateral.

So our personal home was the collateral for, uh, the business purchase, right, for the, for the loan. And so if we didn’t work, we would lose our home. If we didn’t work, we now had two kids. If we didn’t work, right? Like, no option. And so that’s what really forced me to say, “Okay, we need to figure this out.

Like, we either sell the company and do something else or, [00:10:00] or, uh, think of this,” because at that time AI was, like, ChatGPT had just been released. It was very new. I was like, “Well, let’s see what this can do,” right? And so thank God it worked out because I don’t know what would’ve happened otherwise, to be honest

Erika: Yeah, definitely. So now tell us a little bit about what happened once the moment after you bought the company, because you mentioned that the previous owner disappeared after five days of closing and stole a good amount of money, and the manager quit, and it was pretty much just like chaos. So how did you even survive those first 30, 60, 90 days as business owners?

Andrea: Yeah. It– I can honestly tell you it was one of the hardest times of my life, like in the sense that, again, when you buy this company thinking that this is going to be a great investment, right? That it’s going to allow you to have the freedom, and not just be free, but be a millionaire, a multimillionaire, right?

That was the goal. And we end up with something completely different where we are losing [00:11:00] clients. Like our biggest clients, we lost them. We went, again, from those, you know, having a large crew to just having two employees barely doing the thing. And mind you, it was so bad, like we lost all the employees because what happened was that the, the business– the previous business owner, he said, um, there was a pending project.

We ended up completing the project, and he had already received the money up front. He didn’t pay us anything, so we ended up being on the hook for seventy-five hundred dollars, right? On top of that, he just disappears just four days later, so we have no i- We, we bought this landscaping company not knowing anything about landscaping.

I had no idea a Christmas palm was called a Christmas palm, right? Like I had no idea of any type of like reference when it comes to plants. And so what ends up happening is that obviously as we take over, the employees realize that we don’t know any– what we’re doing. They realize that, you know, they all start asking for raises.

Then the manager says, “I don’t think these people are gonna make it.” And he gathers everybody at the gas station and just says, “Hey, these guys are not gonna make it. You [00:12:00] guys all better start looking for another job.” And when that happens, we end up just going from those twelve employees down to two employees.

We don’t– We are now trying to keep the clients that we have left and complete the projects. So my husband ends up having to become a laborer to go out there in Florida, he, to do a job and perform the job so we wouldn’t continually, um, losing more clients. And I’m at home with the babies, answering phone calls, uh, figuring out how to keep the clients happy and how to get more leads because we’re losing clients every single day.

And so it’s a really scary situation because we thought we knew anything, something about business and clearly we didn’t, right? An e-commerce business is a completely different beast from a service-based business. And going through that situation is when you realize, you’re like, all right, I– one option is just to quit and to fail and to let the, uh, SBA just take our home and, and feel like we’ve got nothing left or the other option is just to, no, just come back [00:13:00] to what you’re made of, um, strengthen yourself and how do we move forward from here?

Like yes, we, we don’t know what we’re doing. Yes, this happened. Now we need to move forward. And so that’s when I start trying to learn Google Ads. That’s when my husband starts doing labor sales. Uh, just we, we team up together and we’re like, “Okay, you’re good at this. I’m good at this. Let’s just, let’s just figure this out,” right?

And the business, we get the business back up to where it was. We then automated with AI and yeah, it was just finding strength in the hard situation.

Erika: Yeah, because I’m sure there was a moment there where you were like, “We totally made a mistake. What did we get ourselves into? Why did we do this?” And then, yeah, and then to see all the, the employees leave, and then to see you build it up and probably make it even more successful than it was before, like, what a comeback story.

What a fun way to… Like, that’s the best revenge, right? Success is the best revenge, and believing in yourself as well. So [00:14:00] with AI, you had made an attempt to hire somebody on Upwork and it didn’t work out. So tell us about that, because you, I think you in your mind knew AI could help you, but you didn’t know AI yet, so you attempted to outsource it, and then what happened?

Andrea: did. Yeah, I did. I had this vision. I’m like, “Okay, I’m so overwhelmed with all this customer service phone calls,” and, like, trying to, respond to everything, and schedule the crew and do all those things. And so I had a vision. I don’t know why. I was like, well, um, at the time you had IVR menus, which are basically where you’re like, “Okay, type, um, type, uh, press 1 if you want to be connected to sales.

Press 2 if you want to be connected with customer service,” right? And so in my head I’m like, “Well, this thing, AI, it’s supposed to do things automatically, right? So let me just put together an AI voice agent.” And well, at the time I’m just thinking of, like, the AI thing that will just … When people say, “I have a problem or a complaint,” they’ll just send them to a complaining department which will handle, [00:15:00] like, a form or something, right?

So I end up hiring someone on Upwork to say, “Like, listen, this is the vision.” I give him a diagram of it, it should do exactly this step by step. And five months later, $700 paid upfront, and I got nothing. He’s like, just a dialogue flow that would not do absolutely anything. And so when that happened at the same time, I tried hiring someone else to help me with a few au- like, automations on make.com, uh, which is essentially a platform that allows you to just, um, create, like, a, a process.

Something happens after a specific task, right? After a specific trigger. And so I hire someone and, and she creates it in my account. I’m like, “Wait, it’s that easy?” Like, “That’s it?” So I just dive into this deep rabbit hole and just ended up learning everything, just spending hours and hours on YouTube, and I said, “I have to figure this out myself.”

I end up building the customer service AI agent who becomes our receptionist, books our calls directly in our CRM, is now [00:16:00] connected to our, um, to Jobber, which is what we use for the landscaping company, answers the phone, is able to help people, give them information, answer questions, and that just frees me up so much, right?

And so we end up doing a couple more things, like as soon as someone, we service a property, they get automated images and notes from the crew on what they said. So all these things that just start giving us all that time back. And we’re now like, “Wow, this is really working.” And now we have AI running our marketing, AI running our customer service, AI to help us with sales.

So it is now, like, it’s all over my life.

Erika: Yeah, and I think, I feel like almost every conversation online now has something to do with AI, and on one side of it, it’s like, “Oh, wow, AI is so powerful.” And I think there’s another side of it where people are almost, not offended by AI, but, you know, almost concerned about what’s gonna happen to employ- what’s going g- to happen to us.

Is our job going to be replaced? And all these different things. And I understand [00:17:00] that, but I also understand that as small business owners, we’re very limited. Like, most small businesses fail, right? And within the first five years. And as small businesses, we’re limited when it comes to funding, especially individuals of, of color, right?

We don’t have as much access to funding. We don’t have all the time in the world either to… And w- I think specifically Latinos, like, we’ve been trained to work so hard and overwork, and you’re like, “Oh, I’ll just kinda, like, do it all myself,” and it’s, it all takes hard work for success. And I think we also have this opportunity with AI where we can build successful businesses without breaking our backs.

So there’s also this, like, really positive side of it, and I’m sure you’ve gotten s- mentions from both sides, so I’m wondering, how do you navigate that?

Andrea: Yeah, I love that you just said that because we really do, and I found that I had that mindset. I’m like, “I have to work [00:18:00] really hard in order for it to, for me to be able to make money.” Um, and when I come across AI and it makes it so easy for me to make money, right? And for me to grow on social media, and for me to do a lot of the things that I’ve been able to do in just the past six months, it comes down to understanding, and, and this is kind of what I share with the business owners that I work with in my coaching program is, first we need to change the mi- the, the, the identity, right?

The mindset. We need to understand that AI’s not going to replace us, but we do have to become AI first companies, where we start directing AI to do specific work for us. It doesn’t mean that AI is going to completely replace us and do everything for us. But why do you wanna be m- doing data entry on a spreadsheet, right?

If you could actually be having a conversation with a client where you’re, um, you know, just making a sale, or you’re building the strategy and the vision for your company. Those are two tasks that are going to generate you a lot more money than if you’re just doing [00:19:00] research or just doing data entry, right?

Like, it… What, what I’m, what I propose to business owners is not, don’t just abandon the work that you do. It’s not abandoning the work. You are delegating to a fully trained and capable entity that you have trained based on your business, how you like to do things, what don’t, what you don’t like to do, how you like to sound, how you don’t like to sound.

So if you do it right, you’ll be able to delegate so much work that will just allow you to just level up and be able to, um, grow the business. Obviously, utilize your resources in a much effective and, and e- and efficient way, right? And so with AI, it’s just like, yes, there’s this fear element to it, like, what’s gonna happen?

Is it gonna take over the world? Like, this movie type of thing, right? Um, but my coach said something that it really kind of stuck with me and it’s, “I’d rather be an optimist than a, than a pessimist,” right? I’m not gonna know what’s happened, [00:20:00] what’s gonna happen in 30 years from now or 20 years from now.

So why would I spend the next 30 years just worrying that it’s going to take ov- over our lives and, and kill all of us, right? Instead of thinking like, “This is actually something that I can use, and it’s going to help me grow in my business, both personally, but professionally. It’s going to give me time back for me to be, be with my kids,” and giving them time that I didn’t have before, right?

That’s something that is life changing, that allow, AI allows you to do that, so

Erika: Yeah. Yes, exactly. And to your point about how you use it makes a big difference, and in my coaching program, I have something called, um, the Mindset Meha Bot, which is all about helping my clients overcome a mindset block, and it’s trained on my framework. So it’s not like they’re getting random advice from a robot.

They’re getting my own framework at any time. 

Andrea: Yeah 

Erika: And I’ve even thought about this like, “Oh, is this, this replacing me or somebody else?” And I’m like, “No,” [00:21:00] because they can use this little automated thing any time of the day, while they can only see me on our weekly coaching calls, and yeah, they can message me in our community, but I’m probably gonna take a day to respond.

And for them, if they’re having a moment where they’re really freaking out about something and they know that they need coaching, they could go to that at any time. So there’s also that, where it’s convenient for my clients, for your customers in the landscaping business, as well as your clients in your coaching program.

So tell us what, um, what’s kinda like the biggest mistake you see business owners make with AI or not using it? Like what, what is the first thing you suggest they do?

Andrea: That’s a great question. So I see, I think it was four types of business owners that I was sharing in a video the other day. The first one’s the ones that’s, you know, just thinking that AI sucks because they’re just using ChatGPT and they just ask questions, it answers. So they’re stuck thinking that that’s AI, and so that’s the number one [00:22:00] mistake.

It’s like, no, AI is not just, to answer questions. It’s just that you don’t know how to use it and implement it in your business correctly, the second person is like they are now becoming the technical people in their business, and so now they’re spending all their time building all these tools because Cloud code allows you to build so many solutions and you can suddenly do so many things.

But you stop focusing on the things that actually make you money in your business, right? And so what happens is that because it takes you… It took me three years to be where I am right now with AI, right? It’s been a lot of trial and error in, in knowing what works and what doesn’t. And so what is happening with business owners is like, yes, they’re spending all that period of time, trial and error.

So you have to remember that when you want to do something, right, you either invest your time or invest your money. And so when you invest your time, it’s gonna take you a really long time for you to get to where you need to get to. Um, but you’re eventually gonna get there, right? And so but their business [00:23:00] is…

The, the focus of their business should always be that strategy, that vision, and the sales, which is what really keeps the business going because at the end of the day, implementing AI is something technical, right? You wouldn’t hire someone… I wouldn’t be doing the landscaping work in my company, right?

I’m, I’m, I need to be the head of the company. Um, the other issue that I saw with business owners is thinking that, you know, we have cowork and, and, like, these agentic tools like Manage, Cowork, and we think that that’s, that’s it. Like, that’s, this is so good. This is great. And- Don’t get me wrong, co-work is incredible.

I love co-work. Madison’s really good. But when you get to that level five, what I call the level five, the engineer, right? Um, when you’re using cloud code, you don’t just use the solutions that are already available to you, but you start coming up with the problems, and AI is building whatever solution needs to be built.

So if the tool is not available, if the [00:24:00] solution’s not available out there, it will build it for you. And so that’s where it gets extremely powerful because you can literally, and I mean it when I say that you can do absolutely anything you want with your business. Automate anything, create a system, create an employee, create absolutely anything that you want.

So as long as you can come up with the problem, right? Now it’s not about a f– it’s not a matter of like, is this problem solvable? Because it is, right? It’s just what problem to solve, right? And so it’s understanding that we need to really look at our business as consultants. And so it, it makes me– it makes me really think because I was questioning myself.

I’m like, “I’m probably not gonna have a job later on,” because AI is gonna be so good that it could just do everything on its own, right? But it’s, it’s not a matter of like, can AI do the solution? It’s like, can you come up with the problem, right? So what I do is really look at a business and say, “The problem is here.

Like, let’s fix this first because once we fix this, right?” Let’s say, um, designing, right? Production. [00:25:00] Whatever the problem is here because we don’t have XYZ, that will allow me to just input that into AI, and AI is then going to do all the work, you know, whether that looks like a system, an automation, an AI agent.

We’re just gonna know exactly what to build. So that’s kind of… Yeah.

Erika: That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense because AI is so powerful, but if you’re not using it intentionally or if you still don’t understand your business from a leadership perspective or from a strategy perspective, you’re just gonna do a whole lot of work that’s not actually im- making an impact on your bottom line.

Andrea: Totally

Erika: the people who are listening and they’re like, “What is she talking about with AI agents and AI employees?” It’s like they might be imagining an actual, um, what are they called? Humanoids, like walking around in their house, like helping them do different things. Can you explain to us what that means for somebody who may not be that versed in AI?

Andrea: Of course. Of course. So when I say AI employees is we literally have AI doing the work for us, right? So when I mention AI [00:26:00] agents, I mean, you have a, a brain, which is the AI that thinks and reasons through things, and you’re giving it hands to actually do work. And the hands are that you’re giving it access to the tools that you use.

So that’s Gmail, that’s Slack, that is your CRM, that is your phone, right? You’re giving AI access to absolutely everything. So now that it can reason, now that it has context on your business, on who you are, what you do, your services, the pricing, your SOPs, what you like to do, what you don’t like to do, right?

I mean, standard, your standard operating procedures. So when you have an agent that is trained on all of that, it can now, actually you can say to it, “Okay, I want you to…” So I’ll give you an example on my own business, right? Um, my coach told me, “Hey, Andrea, like, you need to start helping more people. You need to launch the coaching program because people need their, your help doing this,” right?

So I end up saying like, “Okay, how am I gonna do this?” So I just tell my AI agent, right? I send him a message on Telegram, and I say, “I want you to launch my website, and I want you to put together a [00:27:00] website for my, for the coaching program, enroll people, Masterclass, payment links.” It literally just went straight to Stripe, got the payment links.

It went to my website, built the entire thing. Normally, like, if you took me back to 10 years ago, I would’ve had to go on WordPress, use, I don’t know if Elementor was back then, but use Elementor or use HTML to build the thing, build a website, get the payment links, connect it to the website, all of that.

It was done by my AI agent in just a couple of minutes, right? And so that is what I mean when I say you have AI employees. You have– You direct them, telling them exactly what they need to do, and they’re gonna do the job for you

Erika: Amazing. Uh, yeah, that any type of sales page or y- like you mentioned, getting the links, all of that is so time-consuming. I’ve also heard of people who maybe aren’t business owners, but using AI agents to help them do basic things that we keep procrastinating, like cleaning up their inbox. And [00:28:00] which is so simple, but so essential for…

It, it’s, it’s a task that’s like, “Oh, that’s not that hard,” but how long have you been procrastinating on it?

Andrea: Totally. You can even go to the point, like AI will go through your entire computer. Like how many of you guys just randomly takes, take screenshots, save all your files in your desktop, and you look at your desktop and there’s a million files everywhere? You can have… You can go to Clau- um, to, to Claude Cowork and say, “Hey, Claude, I want you to, like clean up my entire desktop.

Go through every single file.” It will look at the image. It will rename the, the file based on the image. It will tell you, “Hey, do you want this deleted? Do you want this removed? Um, do you wanna keep this one?” It will organize it by topics. So that is how powerful it is. So you no longer have to, again, take the time to do all that click.

Anything that you can do on your computer, AI can do for you. It’s, it’s that crazy. Like it can click, create files, close files, open files. [00:29:00] So you no longer need to build a pitch deck. You no longer need to put together this ex- crazy spreadsheet with projections and, and formulas and numbers. That’s not something you should be doing anymore.

It’s… I know it sounds crazy, but I promise you, it, it… People are do- I’m doing it. Like there’s a lot of people that are already living like that. And so what’s going to happen and what, what listeners need to understand and, and business owners is that there is no way that the professionals that don’t implement AI can keep the same jobs that in, in, you know, 10 years from now if they don’t go…

If they compare each other, if they compare their job or their role description to someone that is an AI first professional. The same thing happens for a company, right? Like if you ask me, I’m going to hire a manager. Why would I hire a manager that is going to charge me the same thing for someone that is going to take 10 hours to perform a specific task, when I could hire the same manager for the same [00:30:00] price, but it’s going to take two hours, and so he can use the remaining eight hours to perform as, an- another job or do something that generates more revenue for the business, right?

The same exact thing happens for, uh, when you compare how businesses that don’t implement AI are not going to be able to compete in, you know, five, 10 years from now

Erika: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. One of the ways that I was using it just last week, I redid the curriculum for my program, and I already knew what my trainings were. So, um, one, I used AI to help me clean up my talking points because I was like, “Let me not make this be a huge video.” But then when I was done, I thought I was going to have to use CoWork for this, but I just used regular Claude.

I just took the transcript of my video, and I was like, “Please help me come up with a worksheet for my clients. Here’s my branding, here are my colors, here’s my typography.” And then it came back and was like, “Okay, if we want this to be Google, a Google Doc, then, um, we need to change the [00:31:00] typography because the typography’s not available there.”

So it was smart enough to even think ahead with, like, if we use a font that Google Drive doesn’t already have, your clients are gonna get a messed up file. So, and then it suggested new ones. I was like, “Perfect, let’s do that.” And worksheets used to take me so long.

Andrea: It’s such, like such boring work. Like, there’s no reason. Yeah, I, I hated that. Like, you had me, you had me put together a presentation, and I was like, “Oh my God.” It took me three hours. I hated the whole, you know, what am I gonna say? What am… So you just get, like, those three hours that you would normally take to put together that draft, have AI put the draft for you.

I literally do that for every single, um, coaching class that I have or, you know, whatever it is I’m doing. I have AI do the draft first, and then I just tweak a couple things here and there and, like, that’s it. You’re done. so that makes a massive difference. There’s no… And I agree with you.

It’s, it used to take so much time, and it’s not necessary. Like, why would you want your time going there, [00:32:00] honestly?

Erika: Yes, exactly. And as we were talking about AI replacing jobs, and then we were talking about the different use cases, I’m like, “Who’s actually gonna do that?” Like, who’s actually gonna go through your desktop and look at all the different screenshots you have? Like, you’re not gonna do that. Your assistant’s probably not ever going to do that.

That’s just gonna keep getting delayed and delayed because it’s not on the priority list, and it would still make your life so much easier, but it’s not on the priority list. Other things are. But we could talk about use cases all day. I guess, like, what is your– what are the tools that you think business owners should be using?

So we talked about Claude Cowork, um, which can actually take over your computer and help you do things, but what else do you think are fundamental tools that business owners should be using?

Andrea: Yeah. So I am an absolute number one user of Anthropic, right? And so all I do is… I used to have a lot of tools, like I used to have Make and then n8n, and I had a bunch of different tools running. And so now the only tools that I have left, I literally just have my [00:33:00] Anthropic subscription. And inside Claude Cowork, like one of the things that you must be using is the Chrome extension.

If you’re not using the Chrome ex- extension to get work done, like that is a massive hack, right? You literally have AI do the, just go fill out forms for you, click places, do research for you. It will do it, right? So, so that’s in terms of cl- um, using Claude Cowork. I don’t type anymore, and that’s a huge hack and that’s my number one thing that I recommend to people, is like don’t be typing anymore because we were born to tell stories, and as humans, we love just sharing who we are, what we do.

And what happens is that when we type, we have to think about what we ha- what we’re gonna type, we have to write it, and then we have to read it again, and then we have to consume that. So it’s a lengthy process, right? It’s, it’s really time-consuming. And you have tools like Whisperflow, where you literally just press a key on your keyboard, and you just start speaking naturally like you would be like we’re having a conversation right now, and it’s going to write everything [00:34:00] that you just said.

Like, you can use that for emails to give Claude or your AI context on everything that you wanna do, on who you are, right? And so that’s su- super helpful, so that’s definitely one of my tools. Uh, Cowork and my, and my number one, the one that I use on a daily basis is Claude Code. It’s– Claude Code is just next level.

I mean, Claude Code is everything for me to be honest. ‘Cause that’s where I build my AI agents where they just, you know, I talk to them, and we have– they do work and do things for me, so

Erika: Wonderful. And, um, yeah, you’re so right about the writing. I ca- I can’t believe I used to write emails, like, word by word. Now I just speak it out and I’m like, “Okay, this is what I wanna say. Please help me format this into a high-converting email.” And even with, uh, content as well, where s- I think people, even with YAP content, right, how it’s been such a big thing lately, people think that others are just so well-spoken and they’re just concise, and no.

It’s, like, to make it look [00:35:00] effortless, it actually requires effort, and a lot of creators I know, we use AI to be able to kinda, like, we, we spill out the story and make it all messy, and then we’re like, “Okay, help me reformat this into a 45-second video.” And then we read the script. So it’s still our ideas, it’s just concise and formatted with the support of, of AI.

Still our stories, still all of that. How do you think that AI is changing business, and what are some of the trends that you’re seeing right now?

Andrea: AI allows you to just move so much faster. And going back to what you said about content creation, like, just to give you an example, I was able to grow my, my Instagram to 40,000 followers, and that was 25,000 followers just came in the past four months after I started using AI to help me grow in social media.

So

Erika: I’m moving

Andrea: the reason why I’m saying that is because when you know exactly w- how to implement that in your business, how to use it to just move faster, right? [00:36:00] Like I- I’m telling you, Erika, the only things that I do, right, the only things that I, I do myself is content creation for social media, right, because that’s how I get my leads.

I sit down on sales calls just for consulting, right? And that’s it. Like, that’s it. Everything else, it’s either my AI agent or my executive assistant they’re doing, right? And so what happens is that it allows you to just move so much faster. It allows you to free up your people, the, the pe- the people in your business, like the humans in your business, right, you free them up so they can actually do high leverage work.

And when that happens, your revenue goes up, your profit goes up because your mar- your margins go up, right? Your, you lower your margins. Like, it just… At a business level, it just allows you to scale. Like, there’s no other way. It just helps you scale and become a lot more productive

Erika: Wonderful. So my program is specifically [00:37:00] all around helping women build their personal brand so that they can make money off of that. And, uh, with the rise of AI, I think we can all agree that personal branding is so important because it’s not even just about information, right? It’s about sharing your story.

It’s about people being able to see you, people being able to trust you. So when you– as soon as you were like, “I used it to help grow my social media,” I was like, “Hold on, we gotta talk about this” because I know my listeners are gonna be like, “Wait, what did she do? How did she do this?” So what would be some tips that you would maybe give somebody who’s looking to grow their audience and grow their, um, personal brand and grow their socials, whether they…

maybe they already have a business, or the goal is to start a business, and they know that that’s the best way to start leads. How would you suggest that somebody leverage AI?

Andrea: Yeah, that’s a great question. So Let me tell you, when I started, just like I said to my husband, “Hey, I’m not doing this anymore.” I started doing content. That was back in like November, um, or October I started doing content. And I was like, “This is not working out. This is not doing good.” And it’s just [00:38:00] regular, normal content.

And I, because I hire, I, I hired a business coach to help me really grow and, and, uh, it’s, uh, Dan Martell. He’s my business coach, and he’s very focused on personal brand. So he’s like, “You need to grow a personal brand, grow a personal brand.” And I’m like, “What does that even look like,” right? So then I started looking into AI agents and all this whole AI things and how I’m gonna i- use that to, um, grow my personal brand.

And so I’m sitting in this podcast because an AI agent reached out to you to say, “Hey, let’s have Andreia on a podcast.” Okay? So first of all, right, just being on podcasts, like having a- my AI agent just like do the research, find podcasts, finding brands, like research, you know, I like this podcast. This is something o- obviously I give it the guidelines on the things that I align with because I don’t wanna s-sit with someone that I don’t, you know, align with 

Erika: But those emails, those, that reach out, that kind of thing, it’s being done by AI, right? Number one. And when it comes to content, [00:39:00] so I st- I took a content course. I was very like, “All right, I’m doing this.” And so what happened is that I started using it for research. And you realize that when you’re doing content, the whole strategy is not even getting people to, like, you, you, you shouldn’t be thinking, I don’t want to say you shouldn’t think about people, but if the algorithm doesn’t like your piece of content, it’s not going anywhere.

Andrea: Nobody’s going to watch it. Nobody’s going to read it, right? And so then using AI to do that research for me to help me find the topics that people resonate with, ’cause th- that’s what you really want to find. You want to find topics that people want to talk about and people want to hear about, right?

Because I may love to talk about acquiring a landscaping, but turns out most people are not acquiring a landscaping, so they don’t want to hear about that, right? So instead they want to

Erika: for that.

Andrea: They’re s- exactly, they’re definitely not searching for that. So if I talk about how to implement AI in a business, I am much, [00:40:00] like my, that topic is a lot more likely to take off.

So AI, AI helping you with that research just changes things. Number two, it was with the hooks. Like understanding that if we are not engaging in the past, in the first three seconds, like everyone’s attention span right now is like zero to none, right? So if we are not engaging, if we’re not saying something interesting, if we’re not saying…

So, so one of the things that I use to, to like… I tell AI like, “Would this hook a, um, would ninety-nine percent of people that watch this hook, are they going to stay until the end of the video?” If it’s a no, then change the hook. Are this, as this piece of content, are, is someone going to pay ten dollars- To watch this piece of content.

If it’s a no, then it’s a g- then it must go, right? So using AI to really filter through those scripts, to filter through the hooks to see which ones are more likely to perform or not perform are just, like, [00:41:00] huge, um, game changers. I tried using, um… I tried having my AI clone do the videos for me, but I realized that, like, it’s m- a lot more…

I just like my, my just sharing the energies doesn’t come across the same. Like, it… We’re still not there to the point where it could just share the energy and the vibes, right? Based on what you’re trying to say to it, it will read the script, like, super like this, very calmly, and I’m not like that. So it just, I, you could really tell the difference on who, which ones was my, my AI clone and which one was really me because you can really have AI be, um, clone you, and it sounds just like you, and it looks just like you, right?

It’s just a matter of just the energy and how it comes across that

Erika: Exactly. Yeah, and then you don’t want somebody to get on a consult call with you, and then you’re like this bubbly person. Well, and it’s the… Not that there’s anything wrong with being bubbly, it’s a, it’s a huge strength. But if your AI clone is, like, a very different vibe, and then, yeah, I think one of the biggest compliments I get from people is that, “Oh my gosh, you’re exactly like you are online.”

And I’m [00:42:00] like, “How, how could I be someone else?”

Andrea: I totally agree. I totally take that as a compliment too, because I’m the type of person that I will record videos without makeup, like looking, because I want people to really feel like, like I, I don’t wanna be somebody else when they see me in, in person, right? I don’t wanna look different. I don’t wanna act different.

I don’t wanna be anybody else but who I am. Like you’ve… I’ve come across it. It’s been a massive super long journey for me to learn to love myself, and now I really do, so now I don’t wanna change myself or look any different, right? And so, so using AI to really just help show the person that you are, but just be able to put content a lot faster, right?

And then the last way that I use it is just, um, I create a piece of content, I upload it to my Airtable database, and it just goes out to like Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, like all my social media platforms, and it’s all like just upload it one click done. Um, it can also edit videos by the way, which is, it’s still like not as great as a video [00:43:00] editor, because I’m not gonna say that it is.

It’s not. But if you don’t have anybody else doing it for you, it helps.

Erika: Yeah, definitely. And it’s, I mean, it’s only a matter of time, I think, before it gets… At this rate, right, for it to now be able to edit videos. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But I agree with everything you said about, um, leveraging AI for content, um, s- specifically because this is what I help my clients with. But a big thing I’ve been telling them is the hook matters more than anything.

Like, you have to deliver on what the hook is, right? You can’t have something clickbaity and then not deliver in, on the message. But usually, usually my clients are– they have this wonderful message, and then it’s just lacking on the format or the hook, which then I tell them, I was like, “This is like having a gourmet sauce in, in like dog food, a dog food can.”

Like, it’s just not packaged in the way that people… People won’t pick it up because they don’t, don’t know how great it is on the inside. So the hook matters more than anything. And then what you mentioned [00:44:00] about, um, leveraging AI, about what is it that people are actually searching for right now, or what are they interested in, because we’ve transitioned from this, like, social media to this interest-based media, and now if your feed is full of things you’re interested in, it’s not full of your friends.

So it’s so important to create content based on what people are interested in, and like, I feel like we do, could do a whole separate podcast episode on that. But is there anything I didn’t ask you, Andrea, that you want to talk about or that you think is important that the listeners know?

Andrea: No, no, I think you’re 100% right on, on everything you said. In fact, it reminded me of a conversation I was speaking yesterday to my, my best friend, and she’s like, you know, I’m casually talking. She, she’s, she works in corporations. She works for, um, PW- what’s it called? Um, Accenture, PW, I, I don’t

remember. PW, is that, is that what it’s called?

Erika: I’m not sure about PEW, but Accenture I’m familiar with. I’ve done, like, brand partnerships

Andrea: of the big, yeah, one of the big, big names, right, in, in [00:45:00] consulting.

Erika: Is it

Andrea: and I’m just… There we go, that one. So I’m talking to her, and I’m casual, I’m just like, “Well, you know what Hormozi says, right? So I think everybody in the world knows Hormozi. Like, I think he’s just brilliant brain, right?

Everyone should know about him.” She’s like, “Who?” “Well, Hormozi.” “Who?” “Do you don’t know who, who Hormozi, Alex Hormozi is?” She’s like, “I have no idea. I have no idea who that is.” I’m like, “What?” So then it just reminded me that this, the internet is this whole world, right, where anyone that’s into entrepreneurship, it’s like you see Hormozi and you’re like, “I, I, I’m super well aware of who Hormozi is,” right?

But for anyone that’s not in entrepreneurship and they’re interested in other things, so you will find your tribe of people. You will find people that vibe with what you’re w- and align with the things that you align with, right? It’s just knowing how to get to them, just knowing what type of… Like, how to reach that audience, because the algorithm has to know [00:46:00] exactly who you are, what you talk about, what you do, in order for it to just put out the content out to the people that are, that it’s relevant for.

So,

Erika: Mm-hmm.

Andrea: so yeah, completely agree with the interesting…

Erika: Yes, exactly. It’s so funny how social media is almost like everybody’s own version of reality, where, like, we all see different things in the world. Like, we could all take the exact same trip, exact same days, and then what you get out of it is so different, and it’s because it’s, like, what you focus on.

I’m into spirituality as well, so I’m like, the algorithm is literally like law of attraction. It’s like the more you focus on something, the more it shows you more of that. And it’s crazy that that’s how, like, life works, too.

Andrea: Yeah. I was gonna say that. I’m like, “That’s exactly how life works too.” I mean, and, and, and it’s crazy because, like, you really do, and you really can. I mean, I, I’m … I don’t know if this is, like, a, a, a topic for the podcast, but, like, I’m so into just really knowing that you can build the life that you [00:47:00] want.

It’s just manifesting it, and you s- you start working towards it. Like, I’m telling you, six months ago I w- I was dreaming of being exactly where I am right now. And I’m just like, wow, the crazy things that happen when you really set your mind to something and just become consistent and become disciplined and just put in the work and just the opportunities start lining up, the things start showing up, and I don’t know.

I- it’s just crazy that, like, is that just … That, that’s the way life happens, right? It’s just what you’re thinking about, what you’re manifesting into your life, the good and the bad, right?

Erika: Ex- exactly. Yeah. And it can be… We’re so conditioned to naturally l- look at the bad side. I don’t know if it’s a Latina thing or if it’s just a human nature thing, right, where we’re kind of more negatively conditioned for survival. But we can also train our brain to look at the possibilities and focus on those and take the aligned action for that.

So yeah, you’re definitely speaking my language with, [00:48:00] with

Andrea: Yeah, 100%. And you know what? I didn’t… The last thing that I would have expected is that business would have put me in such a spiritual journey. And what I mean when I say that is, like, you completely have to change your identity to beco- to, for you to have the things that you wanna have, you need to do things that will put you out of your comfort zone.

In order for you to do those things, you have to change who you are and change your identity. And that happened to me as I was, um, in this path of building a, the business that I was dreaming of and building, you know, having the money that I wanted to have, and all these things. And it was, I didn’t realize that it was, it was all a matter of who I had to become as a, as a human, right?

And I don’t know. It’s, it’s crazy. It’s

Erika: Yeah. No, you’re definitely right. It’s, identity is such a big part of it, and, like, our self-concept and the way we see ourselves shapes everything. It shapes, like, the risks we take, the actions we take, the actions we don’t take, what we respond to, what [00:49:00] we don’t. So yeah. Well, I’m so glad that your AI agent reached out and that we were on this podcast

Andrea: I know. It was, I’m so glad. Thank you so much for, for inviting me to be here because it is, it really had a, was a great conversation, so I really enjoyed it

Erika: Yeah, me too. I’m actually gonna be headed to Miami in August, so I’ll send you a message. Maybe we can

Andrea: Oh, that’d be great. Yeah, for sure. That’d be awesome. That’d be

Erika: So for the people who, um, don’t follow you already, where can they connect with you? And we’ll have everything linked down below, but go ahead and tell us

Andrea: Yeah, yeah, of course. So I’m on every single social media platform. Like I said, my AI just spreads it everywhere, but I’m actually just more active myself on Instagram. So that’s kind of where I live. Um, it’s Andrea Palacios, just my first name, last name, and yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s where I spend most of my time

Erika: Wonderful. Well, we will link all of that below, your Instagram, your TikTok, your YouTube, your LinkedIn, as well as your website. And if those of you listening took anything away from this conversation, be sure [00:50:00] to take a screenshot and tag both Andrea and myself, and Andrea, I’ll be reaching out to you.

Thank you so much for coming on the

Andrea: Yeah, of course. Let’s connect on, in, when you come to Miami.

Erika: Okay, sounds good. Have a good rest of your day

Andrea: Thank you. You as well.